


Dennis Grows Up

by glennjaminhow



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Borderline Personality Disorder, Codependency, Dysfunctional Relationships, Eating Disorders, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Mental Health Issues, References to Depression, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-15
Updated: 2018-06-15
Packaged: 2019-05-23 12:59:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14934716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glennjaminhow/pseuds/glennjaminhow
Summary: “I know it’s been a long day, Den,” Mac says; his voice is muffled and underwater to Dennis, but he listens regardless. “We’ll get this sorted out, okay? We won’t be here for more than a few days. I... I know this sucks, but you gotta stay with me, dude.”





	Dennis Grows Up

**Author's Note:**

> I'm thinking this will be a one-shot, but I'll add more if people are interested.

He’s five and just starting to understand what ‘memories’ are, how they interweave and intersect in his life like patterns woven together on a quilt. He saw his grandma knit a quilt once, but that was a billion years ago. He’s five and doesn’t quite understand why Mommy fights with Dad so often, why Mommy sulks into his room really late at night, lazily wrapping herself around him and whispering sweet nothings in his ear. He’s five and knows that he’s his mommy’s best; he knows he’ll always be her best. Always.

The day he turns six, Mommy smells like rum and the hard cider served at their birthday party. Her fingers are cold against his waist. He tries to tell her no, that it hurts, that he doesn’t like it, but she shushes him and promises to buy him a new Lego set – just for him and not Dee – if he lets her do it. He’s six and learns to turn his brain off, to float away from the pain and ignore how it makes him emotional. Mommy says emotions are for babies, and he’s not a baby; he’s six. 

And, then, he’s seven, and he falls off the tree he and his sister named Count Rootula in their massive backyard. Dee runs away because she’s grossed out by the blood pouring from the gash on his forehead, the way his right arm’s twisted and bruised. He’s seven, and he likes the way the blood flows in between his fingers, how soothing it is to feel... something. He’s seven and doesn’t get emotions or why they’re so important, but he gets a cool green cast and eleven stitches, and Mommy cuddles her special little boy even more at night. 

When he’s ten, Dad yells at him for constantly falling asleep in class one night in December for hours and hours. He can’t help it, though. He’s always tired, like when his allergies act up and Mommy makes him take two tiny pink pills to help alleviate the symptoms. He’s ten and can’t keep his head up during science or math, and he’s hiding out in the library during recess, curled up on the floor beneath his Tommy Hilfiger coat with his arms wrapped around his stomach because it just hurts.

He’s twelve, and suddenly Dee’s into boys, and he isn’t even sure he likes girls. They’re twins, so they’re supposed to go through milestones at the same rate, he thinks. Sure, Dee’s a girl, so she’s taller than him by almost two inches, but Mommy says that’s normal, that he’ll catch up and be much taller than her one day. He’s twelve, and he has his first kiss under the bleachers during a dumbass pep rally. He’s twelve, and his first kiss isn’t with a girl; it’s with an eighth grader named Nathaniel Fox. He has neat t-shirts and awesome hair and makes him smile. 

Thirteen rolls around in the middle of September, leaves slowly changing colors from green to yellow to brown. He’s a teenager, and Mom still sneaks into his bedroom in the middle of the night. He hates the scent of cigarettes on her breath. Hates that she’s doing this to him, and he can’t tell anybody. No one will believe him anyway. He’s thirteen, and his only friend is his twin sister, who is dating some guy named Michael Horowitz that’s three years old than both of them. He’s thirteen when he rifles through his dad’s bathroom and steals a razor for the first time.

Mrs. Klinsky sees a skinny, hopeless fourteen year old boy with curly hair and braces, and he knows this, but he’s flattered anyway. It’s easy to be flattered. Mom always says he’s a handsome, special boy, and he guesses she’s right because he hears it more often than not, especially at night. Mrs. Klinsky is his first, and it hurts, but it’s cool because there aren’t any expectations, and she tells him it’s alright, to take his time, to really feel what’s happening. He’s fourteen and goes home after, crying softly and slashing his forearms with Dad’s razor. Mom comes in later that night and asks what’s wrong, why he didn’t come out for dinner, and he says nothing. Mom says it’s alright because he needs to eat a little less anyway. He’s fourteen, and he doesn’t eat much anymore because it fills the emptiness in his chest; it helps.

He’s fifteen, and Dee gets her learner’s permit before him. He breaks his bathroom mirror. He’s fifteen, and Dee brags about banging Nathaniel Fox, his first kiss. He slashes Dee’s bike tires with the same pocket knife he uses on his thighs later than evening. He’s fifteen, and Dee gets a back brace for her scoliosis, and he gets his braces removed after eighteen months of torture. He celebrates with Mom, drinking a fifth of whiskey and smoking his first cigarette. Mom tells him not to worry, that he won’t get in trouble because this, like other things, is their little secret.

When he’s sixteen, he meets a scumbag named Ronnie the Rat behind the dumpster before first period. He knows Ronnie sells weed, and he thinks he needs some because his stomach constantly aches, and he’s working away his gorgeous skin in between class periods with the pocket knife. Weed is supposed to relax people. He thinks he needs the relaxation, to not have to be perfect, to not have the weight of the world resting on his shoulders. He’s sixteen, and Ronnie the Rat and this short kid named Dirt Grub make him smoke with them. He coughs and coughs, sure that his throat is bleeding, but he feels... free for the first time in years. 

The day after he turns seventeen, Ronnie – Mac – gives him an eighth of premium kush on the house, apologizing for not knowing it was his birthday. Mac comes over after school, and they listen to Red Hot Chili Peppers on his stereo and pass a joint back and forth. He’s seventeen and finally has his first friend in this fucked up world. He’s seventeen, and no one makes him feel anything except for Mac. Mac knows how to calm him down and make the idea of eating one of his dad’s several guns not sound so fucking appealing. He’s seventeen and grateful for Mac.

He’s eighteen, and he graduates high school with a 4.1 GPA and honors. Mac and Dirt Grub – Charlie – just barely pass their classes, and it’s only because he lets them copy his homework almost everyday. He gets a brand new car, and Dee gets nothing. Mom says it’s because he’s going somewhere to be someone amazing, which is true, and Dee’s not going to amount to anything, which he believes is also true. He’s eighteen and leaves for Penn one day in September, right before his birthday, after a summer filled with him and Mac making each other mix tapes and kissing late at night when no one else is awake. He’s eighteen and barely sleeps and doesn’t eat, but he has Mac, and that’s suddenly all that matters.

Nineteen through twenty-two don’t go well. Penn sucks ass. His frat brothers are supremely jealous of him because he’s all that and then some. His classes are fucking boring and way too simple. Mac only comes to visit sometimes, and he usually brings Charlie with him. Mac is poor as shit and doesn’t have money and will blow the money he sends him on weed and prescription pills to sell to make more money. He’s nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, and twenty-two, and he’s hospitalized for drinking too much and not eating. He gets his stomach pumped over fifteen times in four miserable, awful, lonely, sucky, shitty, horrible years. 

He’s twenty-three when he moves back to Philly, where his roots are plastered all over the fucking place. Only roots don’t matter anymore, just like emotions and memories mean even less. Sure, he has a bachelor’s degree in psychology with a minor in sociology, but fuck that. He rents his own apartment, free of any roommates, and holes himself up in his bedroom with too much weed, too many DVDs, too many cassettes, and too much alcohol. He’s twenty-three and doesn’t go out with friends – Mac and Charlie – or go to bars or raves or parties. He’s twenty-three and barely sees any form of sunlight for months and months at a time. 

At twenty-four, he gets a haircut, shaves, and tries to put on clothes that aren’t sweatpants and hoodies. His jeans are baggy and saggy at the crotch. His shirts droop way past his ass. He stares at himself in the mirror, blank, dead eyes glaring back, and shrugs. He uses kitchen knives now; they hurt a lot more, and he’s so dizzy from blood loss and starvation, but the sting is warm and comforting and washes over him like a fuzzy blanket. He’s twenty-four and asks Mac if he wants to move in with him because Mac’s mom is a chain-smoking alcoholic, much like his own mother, and no twenty-four year old dude should be living with his parents. Mac agrees immediately, and he’s moved in later that day. They celebrate with booze and blunts and bumping uglies on his expensive, imported leather couch. 

He’s twenty-five. Mac and Charlie ‘help’ him buy a bar; really, Charlie only puts in twenty-eight dollars and Mac forty-three, but fuck it. It’s this old place in South Philly, and, plus, it’s a bar. It’s every twenty-five year old’s dream to own a fucking bar, a place where he and his friends can drink endlessly for free. He hires Dee as a waitress because she’s so fucking pathetic that she didn’t make it through college like he did and doesn’t have a job anyway. He’s twenty-five and holds his friends’ and sister’s lives in his hands, feeding them like tiny baby birds. He’s twenty-five, and he knows he’s a legend, a God even. 

Twenty-six, twenty-seven, and twenty-eight scrape by, but just barely. Mac finds him unresponsive in his bed one night when he’s twenty-seven, shivering and mumbling to no one, after not eating for nearly ten days. He kicks Mac in the sack and tells him to get the fuck out, to leave him the fuck alone, and Mac calls him fucking crazy. Mac screams at him until he’s blue in the face, but he doesn’t care. Once Mac finally tires himself out, he locks himself in the bathroom with a fifth of Jack Daniels, a lighter, and his trusty pocketknife. He comes out hours later, wasted and bleeding and with burns etched on his side and in between his fingers. 

By the time he’s twenty-nine, he’s gripping at straws. The bar doesn’t make shit for money, Dee annoys the piss out him on a regular basis, Charlie’s going even further off the deep end, and Mac... well, Mac’s sort of alright, he supposes. They live together in a new apartment about twenty minutes away from Paddy's Pub, and it helps. Mac, now acutely aware of his problems with eating and sleeping, keeps him somewhat on track with a schedule. He sticks with it until one night in late July when Mac spends two nights in a row at Charlie’s shithole of an apartment. He pinches the already bruised skin on his arms and side instead, and Mac finds him delirious and rambling under his bed. He’s twenty-nine, and he’s like some fucking little girl who can’t help himself no matter what.

He’s thirty. Thirty. Thirty. Thirty thirty thirty. His twenties are behind him, a thing of the past. He tells everyone he’s in his prime, that he’s this glorious specimen, that he’s a god, but he knows the truth. He’s thirty and pathetic and wastes no time destroying himself even more. Dee calls his face fat? Stop eating. Dad isn’t his real dad? Stop sleeping. Mom dies? Stop eating and sleeping. Stop fucking Mac when no one’s looking. Start toying with emotions and playing mind games he doesn’t even want to play and scheme it up constantly instead.

Thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four... These numbers are meaningless to him. He’s only getting older anyway. He gets married and then divorced, like, a day later. He starts fooling around with Mac all the time again. He keeps drinking and smoking and getting high and contemplating throwing himself off a bridge or the roof of their apartment building or slamming his car into an eighteen wheeler on the fucking highway. He doesn’t understand any of it. Memories are nothing. Feelings are nothing. He’s only happy when he’s with Mac, but they argue so fucking much. He argues with everyone these days. He’s thirty-four and doesn’t feel like talking, screaming, bickering, shouting anymore, but he does it anyway and doesn’t know why. He’s thirty-four, and nothing makes sense, and Mac holds him at night now because, apparently, he can’t be trusted when left to his own devices. It’s okay, though, because he somehow manages to sleep whenever Mac’s wrapped around him. 

He’s thirty-five, only five years away from forty. Dee’s pregnant. He doesn’t really give a shit about the baby because she’s not going to keep it anyway, even if he does think it’d be kind of neat to be an uncle. Whatever. He’ll just fuck up the baby’s life. He’s thirty-five and is so fucking sick of having to act so confident, even if he truly believes he’s mightier and worthier than the rest of these peasants. He wants to turn back time to twenty-three, when he had zero responsibilities and could sleep or drink or get high all day long. He wants to turn back time to where he doesn’t yearn for Mac’s touch, his lips on his, the feeling of his dick in... Fuck. Fucking fuck. He’s thirty-five and punches the brick wall outside of Paddy’s so hard the skin around his knuckles practically disappears; Mac cleans and wraps it up later. 

Thirty-six is just as shitty as all of his thirties have been. There’s nothing remarkable about thirty-six. He’s another year closer to looking old and haggard like his not-father Frank. He drinks too much. He inhales joint after joint just to fill his God Hole; he stopped smoking cigarettes because the idea of him dying of cancer freaked Mac out (he still smokes, though, on occasion when he’s particularly stressed). Nothing works. He’s empty. Hollow. Numb. He’s thirty-six and often feels as though he has nothing to live for, but then he’s reminded, very late at night, when Mac’s snoring in his ear or drooling on his hoodie, that someone cares. 

Now, he’s thirty-seven, and his and Mac’s apartment is destroyed after a squashing beefs incident gone wrong. He wants nothing more than to curl up in his own bed – with Mac around him – but nope. He fucked up. He always fucks up. He keeps screwing himself, doing things he isn’t even sure he actually wants to do, has just convinced himself he does, all the fucking time. He’s thirty-seven and misses his bed and memory foam mattress topper and cool pillows and weighted comforter like some six year old, snot-nosed brat who cries for his mommy at the first sign of distress. But, honestly, he’s thirty-seven, and sometimes he misses his mom for whatever reason. He’s thirty-seven, and Dee’s floor is hard and freezing, and his head throbs relentlessly.

His stomach rolls and swirls and tilts, and he knows it isn’t from wine or beer or whiskey. 

“You okay, Den?”

Mac’s soft voice penetrates his thoughts, grating his ears and irritating his head even more.

“’m fine. Go t’sleep...”

But, fuck, that’s fucking impossible because they’re sharing a sleeping bag and one single pillow, and he knows Mac can feel every fidget, every shiver, every shaky inhale. Mac knows literally everything about him, but it’s even worse now that they’re in close, forced, shared proximity. Dennis doesn’t have much money and can’t afford a new place right now, and, fuck, he misses their old apartment so badly. Tears swell in his eyes.

“Hey...” Mac whispers, and Dennis shields his ears with his hands. The fabric of his sweatshirt singes his skin. His – Mac’s – sweatpants make his legs all scratchy. His back is sore. The sleeping bag is shit, and the zipper keeps burning his arms, and there’s too much light from Goddamn Philly, and, for once, cars are speeding by just too often. Dennis clenches his jaw, keeps his ears covered, and closes his eyes so tightly he almost throws up. 

But he doesn’t flinch when he feels Mac’s fingers brush through his hair. 

“I know it’s been a long day, Den,” Mac says quietly; his voice is muffled and underwater to Dennis, but he listens regardless. “We’ll get this sorted out, okay? We won’t be here for more than a few days. I... I know this sucks, but you gotta stay with me, dude.”

Dennis doesn’t fight it when Mac pulls his hands away from his ears.

“Too much, Mac...” Dennis grates out, wincing as cars honk outside, as the November wind howls loudly, as Dee’s TV blares even though he knows she’s fucking asleep.

Mac slings an arm around Dennis’ waist and tugs him closer, until their chests are flushed together, foreheads touching. Mac’s breath is warm and comforting, smelling of Fireball and rum. “I know, dude. I know.” He rubs Dennis’ back with one hand, fingers sliding gently up and down his spine. Dennis whimpers and hides his face in Mac’s chest. Tears pool on his sleeveless shirt in seconds, and his nose runs without any remorse. Fucking disgusting. “Shh... Shh...”

He’s thirty-seven and being rocked to sleep by a man he can’t love. 

He’s thirty-seven, and the world is just so fucking loud all the time.

He’s thirty-seven, and Mac’s lips are on his.

He’s thirty-seven, and, maybe, just maybe, he’ll find some way to be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! 
> 
> Feel free to follow me on Tumblr: @glennjaminhow.


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